How Sarah Jessica Parker Got Thomas Haden Church Back on TV

Breakups are hard, and divorces are messy. HBO's new series, aptly titled Divorce, is just as complicated as the real thing. Starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church, the series follows Frances and Robert, a middle-aged couple on the verge of a complete meltdown. Their impending breakup is no conscious uncoupling—Frances has been having an affair with an academic in New York City, a revelation that blindsides Robert despite the fact that their home life is as chilly as the frozen, wintry environment that surrounds their home.

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Divorce is a comedic look at a pretty dark subject matter (its creator, Sharon Horgan, previously tackled the complications of a relationship onCatastrophe, which she co-wrote and co-starred in with Rob Delaney). The show follows in a pattern of cable comedies (such as Girls, Louie, and Transparent) in that it depicts three-dimensional, well-rounded characters who can manage to make you laugh and cringe within the span of a 30-minute episode.

Thomas Haden Church talked to Esquire last week about his return to television, how Divorce succeeds through a collaboration between its writers and actors, and the facial hair everyone is talking about this TV season.

ESQ: How did you get involved in the show? Was it offered to you, or did you audition for it?

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Thomas Haden Church: The answer is honest and I'm always afraid it comes off a little cocky, but I mean, I don't audition ever, for anything. I haven't since Sideways, which was 13 years ago. I just don't do it. I honestly never even liked auditioning before, but especially since Sideways.

Now for this, it came to me because of Mrs. Parker—we had done a movie together called Smart People a number of years ago. We really hit it off. We had a lot of fun promoting the movie. I lost touch with her for like seven years and it was the beginning of 2015 and she sent me a lovely note along with the script. She said, "I know you don't do TV," which I don't, hadn't for twenty years—a TV series anyway—and she said, "Please read it. I thought of you first," which is so flattering. She said, 'Please read it and let's just have a conversation about it. Even if you're not interested in it, I would still love to hear your thoughts." And I read it and I thought it was a unique perspective on what is clearly an over-wrought, overly familiar stain in America with marriages coming undone.

She and I spoke and I said, "Look, anything that I get into has to be collaborative." I don't hire on as just an actor. You've got to kind of invite everything that I bring as a writer, as a producer. So I got on with Paul Simms and Sharon Horgan. I had a lot of ideas and they quickly turned around another draft that incorporated a lot of my thoughts and ideas about the story—not just about Robert. And they just immediately demonstrated that we were all working in unity to make the divorce as good as possible.

I think the reviews… some of them have been very strong, some not as strong. I think in spite of everything we have said in advance press that this was not going to be [Carrie Bradshaw] 15 years later, a lot of journalists or critics don't want to accept that. They clearly want S.J. to be sexy and cheerful and a fashionista, and that's not what this show is. She's been at the forefront of that, of like, "Nope. If that's what you're thinking, you're lining up fro the wrong show." Because our intentions were a unilateral attempt to convey a human experience. And that can be grim. It's going to be unpleasant and sometimes it's going to be funny and then sometimes it's going to be pathetic.

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HBO

You say you weren't really interested in going back to television, and this is seen as a comedy—by the technical definitions, because it's a 30-minute show. But it does have what a lot of modern comedies, especially on cable, have: this sense of realism to it that makes it border on the dramatic. I was curious if that was really what convinced you to give it a shot and not think of it as like, "Oh, I'm going to go back and do TV and do this funny show"?

Especially once it all got mapped out what the first season was going to be and began, they were absolutely collaborative. We didn't start shooting until mid-November. They started sending me scripts in August to get my notes, to have conference calls. But once I saw the schematic and we started tinkering— "What about this and what about that, and what about in the midst of this story we can tweak and modify?" That process started three months before—even before that. There were conversations also last year where we just kept on talking and communicating. Once I saw what we wanted to lay out, and clearly it's open ended, I saw it as a five-hour movie. Call it whatever you want—a mini-series or whatever—it's still got a continuing story. This is what I said to a lot of my industry colleagues and friends that have only seen the first episode. I said "Look, don't be too quick to judge. You've only seen 30 minutes of a plot of a movie." That's like saying, that's like saying Ben-Hur is a piece of shit after fifteen minutes, you know? You have no idea what's going to happen. There's a really awesome chariot race, right? But I mean, that's what it is: Divorce is a going to be a Biblical saga…only about a divorce.

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American television has definitely been following a British model in recent years, and Sharon Horgan obviously comes from that part of the world. I think it's been very successful in the last few years here. It's interesting how you talk about shooting it as a collaborative experience. I've interviewed a few people who worked on Transparent and they say that that is sort of how that show kind of works, especially for the actors. It's more about developing character first as opposed to standing in a certain spot and letting the camera decide what you're supposed to do.

Well, I want to comment on that because when you have people like Jeffrey Tambor, who I think is fantastic. I've always thought he was just terrific and obviously he's wonderful in that show. But you get to a certain age and—I don't know, I think we're close in age, he might be a bit older, but I've been doing this as a professional for 28 years in January. You get to a certain point where you can't really be hired just as an actor any more if you care. If you care and you have demonstrated that you have versatility and you're not just speaking dialogue and you're not just a paycheck actor, you want to take on roles that are more fulfilling. If I care, if I want to be fulfilled, if I want this to be a rewarding challenge, then I'm going to have to give everything I can and help the other actors, help the producers and writers understand the guy that I'm trying to deliver. He's going to have to live inside of me and I'm going to have to live inside of him.

I mean, look, when I started out on Wings, they were like, "Here's your dialogue, you're going to help us block this thing." It was a very nailed-down thing, and god bless all those people, but they were not interested in being terribly collaborative with a bunch of young, relatively inexperienced actors. They just weren't. They had a machine that worked very well for them. But I learned how to work in the system. I worked for two years for ABC and Disney writing and trying to create something. In two years we wrote I think four pilots, and every one of them got thrown into the old shit pan. But, I mean, it was the same thing—at that time in the late '90s, ABC did things with a machine in place. And again, it was a very successful machine. I was partnered with a guy named Dave Mandel, who's a very successful writer, and we labored sort of anonymously because we never got anything shot. But we worked. We wrote, we turned in drafts, they were rejected, and we wrote some more.

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HBO

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You and Sarah Jessica Parker are playing a couple who have this long history together that we don't see. Did you work together beyond who was writing each episode to sort of create a dynamic between the two of you that you brought to the table, maybe in terms of a subtext?

Everyone who's ever worked with her knows this about her: S.J. has no hesitation to text you, email, call, and just say, "Hey, can we arrange a call?" She and I really did take it upon ourselves to create a lot of the back history of Robert and Frances. We just started that conversation with Sharon and Paul and the other writers on the pilot. And then she and I, when we were waiting to go back [to shoot], periodically would pick up the phone and talk about an hour, talk about Robert and Francis. I mean, I'm not going to say that it was completely exclusive of that, because it never is—it always involves talking to Sharon and Paul. It just shows how communicative she was. And she's wonderfully articulate and very, very specific in conveying her ideas, and I love that. She's just terrific. I mean, you can't say enough kind things about her because she's just such a generous, professional, disciplined individual to work with. She's been laboring behind the scenes on this particular story for years, even before Sharon became involved.

I was trying to think of other movies or television shows about divorce, even comedic ones. I think the first one that came to mind, which I feel like is such a throwback, was The War of the Roses. Which is obviously a super broad, black comedy. And I was also thinking about An Unmarried Woman with Jill Clayburgh.

I love that movie.

HBO

Yeah, that movie is phenomenal. I think that a lot of movies and television shows that tackle this issue tend to focus more on the wife's perspective. What's so interesting about Divorce was that you have these two people in it and you get both of their perspectives, but you do see Frances cheating on her husband and sort of initiating the break; Robert, then, is the spurned lover. It was sort of surprising to see.

Well, I'll go even farther back and there are movies, thematically, that I talked about a lot that are not comedies at all—just Ordinary People and Kramer vs. Kramer. Kramer has a few more comedic moments, but Ordinary People… Hmmm...

Very, very depressing.

Yeah, but to me, I talked about them a lot thematically when we would get into script meetings because the drama that is maybe even more paramount to the comedy. There's that scene where I give a speech to her, and parts of it are so ridiculous—like when I say that she's Jesse James and I'm Sandra Bullock. But it works because it's somebody just going off and he doesn't know what to say; it's just a spontaneously ridiculous, you know, giving her the high jazz. There's going to be funny stuff for sure—there are times when it's very entertaining, but there's times when it's a bit heartbreaking. They have two kids, who are unwilling participants in this mess, and you'll get to see it from their eyes.

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To end on a lighter question: Your mustache on this show is very impressive. Was that a real mustache?

Thank you. Yes, it is a real mustache. I mean, ultimately it worked for the character to have a mustache. I think that everybody liked it. It was never really intended to be, or to turn into, what it did. We were probably about five or six episodes in and they wrote in which Robert shaves the mustache, and I said, "Alright, well clearly this is up for negotiation." And they were like, "Yeah, you know, it's your face." But we decided it might signal a big change that they're separated and he's on the loose and he's single. I thought about that every one of my divorced friends—the first thing they did was lose 30 pounds and start working out. And so we all talked about it and I said, "You know, I think it's a little too obvious to lose the mustache." I think maybe it becomes a bit of a security in life for him that he's going to change a little, not going to change completely because he still is hoping [for things to work out].

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It never came off, but buddy let me tell you what: It was March 2 and they were like, "Okay, you're a wrap, that's it, you're done." And I'm like, "You're sure? There's no chance at all, tomorrow, a week from now, two weeks from now?" They were like, "Nope. Nope. We know we've got everything. We've reviewed everything in editing. You're done." I went home and, I'm not kidding you, I walked through the front door and walked straight to the bathroom and grabbed my shaver and shaved that thing off my face. I was done. I was sick of it. I don't know if you have a mustache—I mean, I admire people like Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott has had a mustache for probably 50 years.

I know, it's like Sam Elliott isn't Sam Elliott without that mustache.

I mean, I did a movie with Sam Elliott with no mustache, and then right after that we did Tombstone. It seemed like he had grown it back in a week.

I believe that!

We start shooting again February 1, so probably sometime before Thanksgiving I'll have to start growing my mustache out again.

Wow, that's some commitment. I appreciate that.

We actually had talked about the possibility of him not having it at the beginning of the second season. In fact, Paul and Sharon and I were talking last week about the possibility of him not having it. Because we think, between the last episode of the first and the first episode of the second season, they're thinking that there's going to be at least a month of time that goes by before the story picks up again. So it's quite conceivable that Robert might lose the mustache. I may just say "Hey, I don't want him to have it," and they'll be like, "Fine." They won't care. I mean, everybody likes it, but you know what I mean? You don't want to stay with the joke too long. There's so much commentary on it throughout the first season that it kind of probably needs to go away. I don't know. We'll see.

Yeah, well maybe you can shave it off on camera and there'll be dramatic reveal.

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